Lasers are now commonly employed by surgeons to incise tissue during various surgical procedures in place of conventional scalpels. In particular, lasers are often employed where the surgical procedure requires a shallow incision so as to prevent damage to underlying tissue. When a laser is employed to make a shallow tissue incision, past practice has been to interpose damp surgical gauze between each tissue layer once each tissue layer has been exposed so as to protect the tissue from inadvertent laser impaction. However, the use of damp surgical gauze between tissue layers has not proven satisfactory to provide adequate protection to the tissue against inadvertent laser impaction. While the wet gauze is effective to absorb any stray components of the laser beam, once the gauze dries, it will likely combust upon laser impaction or allow the beam to pass unimpeded. To avoid the risk of gauze ignition and/or inadvertent laser impaction, either the surgeon or assisting personnel must periodically dampen the gauze, thus requiring interruption of other more important activities.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a laser-resistant back-up pad for insertion between the layers of tissue incised during laser surgery to protect the tissue from inadvertent laser impaction;
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a laser-resistant back-up pad having a smooth, laser reflective coating permanently applied to the surface of the pad thereby enabling easy pad insertion between the layers of laser-incised tissue with reduced risk of tissue trauma.